Catholics share stories of the faithful departed and the impact on their lives
During November, the Church traditionally remembers and celebrates the lives of the faithful departed.
The month begins with the solemnity of All Saints on Nov. 1, when the Church honors the saints and their lives of holiness. On Nov. 2, the feast of All Souls, the Church remembers those who have died and are still being purified for heaven.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that prayer for the dead is an act of mercy and solidarity, rooted in the Church’s belief in the communion of saints (CCC 1032).
Ahead of this month of remembrance, several Catholics shared stories of people who made a lasting impact on their lives and faith, and who have since died.
God’s Gang
Paul Masek could see Billy Patty’s faith in the way that he lived.
In the mid-1980s, Patty and his wife, Ruth, felt called to start a youth group called God’s Gang at the former St. Lawrence the Martyr Parish in Bridgeton. The Pattys opened their home, and what started with two young people grew into nearly 70 teenagers who gathered in their basement on Wednesday nights. The group featured praise and worship, charismatic prayer and an openness to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Young people came from across the area, with some traveling nearly an hour to be there.
Billy Patty’s trust in God left a lasting impression on Masek. He remembers him answering the phone: “Praise the Lord, Bill Patty speaking,” and described him as someone who was willing to do whatever he believed Jesus was asking of him. Through the Pattys’ nurturing, a community was formed and its members were encouraged to serve others, including helping at a food pantry in north St. Louis he helped found, which later became affiliated with Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
Patty invited Masek and his future wife, Lisa, to serve as young adult leaders, and he credited Patty with showing him what it means to be warm, faithful and generous with others. “Billy completely and totally trusted in the Lord,” Masek said. “He was balanced because Jesus was fully Lord of his life, and he completely relied on the movement of the Holy Spirit. And as the Church encourages us to not be so spiritual that we’re of no earthly good, his service to the poor was just incredible.”
God’s Gang remained active through the 1990s and lasted into the early 2000s. The group helped shape future leaders in the archdiocese, including people who went on to serve in ministry as adults. Patty died on Sept. 17, 2021, at the age of 93.
Speaking the truth in love
When Ann Saladin and her family moved in 2009, their decision came down to one of two houses. So she did what most Catholics would do — she checked out the parishes within the boundaries of each and ultimately decided on St. Clement of Rome in Des Peres as their new spiritual home.
Saladin came to know Msgr. James Pieper through his homilies. She soon began attending daily Mass and found his preaching informative and approachable. He made a point of connecting with her children, including greeting her son, Jack, in the pews on the days he wasn’t serving at Mass. She noticed how his presence had a powerful influence on people, including those who were considering a vocation to the priesthood or religious life.
“He studied the parish directories so that he would be able to put faces with names,” she said. “For such a big parish, he really was able to connect” with people. “That was such a nice way to connect with people from the get go.”
Msgr. Pieper was an intelligent, well-read priest who was attentive to the Church’s teachings, yet he was able to explain them in a way that was accessible to both adults and children, Saladin said. He supported her when she presented her concerns about Girl Scouts and pro-life issues and encouraged her to prioritize her role as a wife and mother even as she went around the archdiocese speaking on the subject.
His legacy lives on in the priests, religious and generations of families he influenced during his long ministry at St. Clement, where he served for 25 years until his retirement in 2014. He died on Aug. 2, 2025, at the age of 93.
“He was a very kind person, but he wasn’t afraid to to tell the truth, even if he did it in a beautiful way,” Saladin said. “I just think he really wanted to get people to heaven.”
Writing a blank check for God
Joe Dobrynski never met Servant of God Sister Clare Crockett, but he carries her holy card in his wallet as a reminder of what it means to be a missionary.
While helping to train Totus Tuus missionaries for the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Dobrynski was introduced to a documentary on Sister Clare, an Irish religious sister with the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother who encountered Christ on a retreat in Spain and left behind her dream of being an actress to dedicate her life to God and missionary work. She died in an earthquake in Ecuador on April 16, 2016, at the age of 33. Her cause for canonization was opened in January 2025.
Dobrynski was moved by what he saw in her work as a missionary sister.
“One of the the main things I shared with missionaries, and I think of now is that she would talk about each morning writing a blank check for for Jesus,” he said. “She was like, OK, it’s going to cost me more effort today to get through this, or it’s going to cost me these sufferings … or it ended up costing her her life. But she would write God a blank check every morning, saying whatever today’s cost is, you are worth it. That’s something that continues to inspire me.”
Sister Clare also had a “totality of character,” he said, meaning that she didn’t lose her personality when she embraced religious life. Her joy, energy and individuality remained, but all of that was deepened through her relationship with Christ.
Dobrynski said he hopes to bring that same approach to the young people he serves now working for Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). “She is a key to how I want to be, or what the spirit of who I am wants to be,” he said.
A fully integrated life
Sister Diane Langford showed her niece, Chrissy Callison, how to help wherever it was needed.
As a member of the Sisters of Divine Providence, she served in a variety of ministry roles in San Antonio; Joplin and Neosho, Missouri; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
When Callison was a teenager growing up in Tulsa, she often joined her aunt at a day center for people experiencing homelessness. The center offered a place to go during the day and opened as a shelter at night. Sister Diane’s work was wide-ranging, and so was Callison’s. When a group canceled a shift at the center’s meals program, Sister Diane would send her niece to the grocery store with a blank check to buy food to make hundreds of sandwiches. Callison also helped at the center’s medical clinic, answering phones and retrieving patient files.
Those experiences led Callison, a school counselor at St. Gabriel the Archangel School in St. Louis, to explore a career in social work. She grew comfortable in service settings and still thinks about how her aunt might respond when someone needed help.
“That was kind of the example she taught me … how fully integrated life is and that you don’t have to be perfect in the eyes of the Lord,” Callison said. Sister Diane didn’t hide her shortcomings, but also taught others that “God loves us for who we are and what we bring to our table and what strengths we possess,” she added.
Sister Diane’s ministry also expanded to other roles. She could lead a retreat, was a gifted writer and offered people practical guidance. Callison remembered her as approachable and skilled at making others feel comfortable. At Sister Diane’s funerals in Joplin and San Antonio, many people shared how close they had felt to God through their relationship with her.
“She had a real curiosity for people, always made people feel comfortable in her presence, always wanted to know about somebody else and would remember details about their lives,” Callison said.
Sister Diane died on Feb. 23, 2025, at the age of 78.
Everyone is welcome
Kim Morgan learned about the gifts of hospitality and generosity from a young age.
Her parents, Betty and John Stephens, raised six children in Evansville, Indiana. John ran a medical supply store and sometimes gave supplies to customers who could not afford them. At home, he worked in his basement workshop, making things for the family and their parish, St. Benedict, including a crucifix for the church.
Betty welcomed priests, seminarians and anyone else who came to the door, even when money and food were scarce.
“They did not have money, and they lived in this tiny little house,” said Morgan, who attends the Oratory of Sts. Gregory and Augustine. “They had different spoons (set on the table) and the spoons indicated you had to say no thank you, so that there was enough food for Father” or other guests, she said.
That example carried into Morgan’s own home. Several years ago, she and her husband, Dr. Robert Morgan, made space for two priests and eight young men traveling from Minnesota to St. Louis for the SEEK conference, gathering mattresses from friends and offering a quick buffet of to-go foods to keep them sustained during the conference. Earlier this year, she hosted a young pilgrim who came to St. Louis to attend the beatification of Blessed Fulton J. Sheen.
“I definitely think I’m a lot like Mom in that everyone here is welcome,” Morgan said.
When Morgan was younger, there were times in her life that she became curious about other faiths. Her parents reluctantly allowed her to go to those churches, but they always insisted on going to Mass first.
“If that meant I had to go Saturday night or at 6 a.m. Sunday morning, so be it … But Mass was always first,” she said. It was an example of how they evangelized without leading with apologetics.
Her parents’ faith was visible in how they treated others and in how they faced life together, she said. They argued with passion and loved with passion, she recalled, showing their children marriage in its fullness.
“They did everything in the here and now, and they did it to its fullest,” Morgan said.
John Stephens died in 1990 at the age of 71; his wife, Betty, died in 2014 at the age of 91.
From the head to the heart
Years before Chrissy Kirchhoffer met Father Carl Kabat, OMI, she had heard stories of his work as an anti-nuclear weapons activist with the Plowshares movement.
In a 1984 action at a U.S. military installation near Kansas City, Missouri, Father Kabat and other activists used a jackhammer at a nuclear missile silo, drawing on the biblical vision of turning swords into plowshares. His resistance to nuclear weapons also included celebrating Mass at missile sites and dressing as a clown at protests. For his protest at the Kansas City site, Father Kabat was sentenced to 18 years in prison and served 10.
Kirchhoffer met Father Kabat in St. Louis around 2001, when she was working at the World Community Center, a home for peace, justice and global community organizations. She said his commitment to justice grew from experiences including witnessing starvation in the Philippines and poverty in Brazil, as well as seeing the effects of government policy on his family’s farm in southern Illinois.
Father Kabat’s example helped inspire Kirchhoffer’s social justice work through the Catholic Worker movement. (A Catholic Worker house in St. Louis was named in his honor, though it has since closed.) After traveling to Iraq in 2002 and Palestine in 2003 and 2004, she became involved in war tax resistance and now works with the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. She connects that work to St. Louis’ role in weapons production at Boeing and the impact on conflicts overseas.
“Nuclear weapons to him was that thing that he was 110% against,” Kirchhoffer said. “It’s encouraging finding that passion — what is that thing that really sets you on fire … and for me, I think it was traveling to places that were impacted by U.S. military spending, namely Iraq and Palestine, and developing relationships with people. It’s really those relationships that move the heart and make those things that can remain in the head alive in one’s heart.”
Father Kabat’s influence lives on in his encouragement to act with others, Kirchhoffer said. “Do what you can, and then sing and dance,” she recalled him saying. He also believed that “the meaning of life is to enjoy life.” Kirchhoffer said she sees the “importance to savor the gifts that we have and that we’ve been bestowed with, to steward and to celebrate.”
